Posted by:
transylvania
(
)
Date: February 20, 2019 02:45AM
Missionary under Dean Burgess from '98 - '00 in Belo Horizonte East Brazil. Was told on multiple occasions, don't write home what's going on because it'll be resolved by the time the letter is received. So I didn't. Two years long. Figured out how to collect call from pay phones just to hear family voices and when they answered I immediately hung up. Went on my mission straight out of high school. Yeah, when I got home I wasn't the sweet, cheery, happy go lucky kid they were expecting when I got home. I was a lot different. Not as in haven't seen you in a few years. As in I don't know you anymore. They didn't like a lot of what they sawc when I got home. I still am distrustful and guarded. I wasn't nearly that way before my isolation years. Not blaming all of it on my mission. But it was steroids to negative parts of my personality.
The announcement that kids can call home on missions is positive to me. But it makes me wonder how many people were isolated from social life and family and shamed from writing what was really going on.
I view Mormonism as a cult and is compensating today for what tactics no longer works. But at the same time I'm really glad missionaries can connect more with family on a mission because the mental health of kids is really not the priority to the greater dogma by old men in suits but survival of the organization.